June4, 2015

WASHINGTON, DC—Representative Eliot L. Engel, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, today made the following statement on the 26th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square uprising and massacre:

“Today, on this somber anniversary, the brutal events that took place twenty-six years ago go largely unacknowledged inside China. Yet, despite a quarter-century-long effort to conceal what occurred on that day, the world knows what happened, and we mourn the lives lost and futures unfulfilled.

“This is especially true in Hong Kong, where an annual candlelight vigil in Victoria Park marks this tragedy. Every year, demonstrators there stand in solidarity with those who fought repression on June 4, 1989—a courageous protest in the face of a Chinese government that erases any mention of the massacre in Chinese textbooks and classrooms.

“The citizens of Hong Kong have long enjoyed civil liberties denied on the Mainland. This year Hong Kong’s stand for Tiananmen bears even greater significance, as the Legislative Council debates electoral reforms dictated by Beijing. The struggle in Hong Kong today for greater autonomy echoes the call for fundamental rights and freedoms sounded in Tiananmen Square 26 years ago. Just as the Chinese government gains nothing by denying the events of June 4, they gain nothing by crushing the aspirations of their own citizens in Hong Kong.”